Why aren’t more people angry about what they see as Obama’s aversion to press freedom?They don’t believe it. I actually have talked to two investigative
reporters who are household names, and I said, “Do you realize what’s
happening to you if this goes forward?” And I talk, I get no response,
and the subject shifts to other parts of the book. No one seems to care.
So you think that if John McCain or Mitt Romney were the president and doing this, there would be a different response?We’d be screaming and yelling and the journalists would be going crazy. And that doesn’t speak well of journalists.

He is worse than Nixon.

We've said that here forever.

And people don't want to admit the truth which isn't helping any.

Bill Clinton was president when I was a little kid. And I knew him as a smiling guy.

Bully Boy Bush was the first one in the White House when I was old enough to pay attention. He was a crook and so is Barack.

And what I've seen in the two of them is that they both have fans, crazed fans. They're not public servants. They're not held accountable.

Friday, March 22, 2013. Chaos and violence continue, protests continue,
State of Law's image as a gutter gossip means they continue to spread
rumors, a government official resigns, we look at Bradley Manning's
importance, we note a group of people who were right about the Iraq War
but haven't been recognized for being right this week, and more.

Thursday, National Iraqi News Agency notes, a village near Tikrit was the site of a mass arrest -- 11 people for 'terrorism.' And Baghdad today saw a mass arrest -- 21 'terrorists.' (Alsumaria notes the Ministry of Interior insists it was a mass arrest of just
19.) This is among the things that has resulted in protesters in the
streets of Iraq since December. The mass arrests lead to many innocent
people being pulled from their lives, pulled from their families, pulled
from their friends -- and where are they? They disappear into the
Iraqi 'justice' system where they wait to be charged -- and may be in
jails for months or years without being charged despite the
Constitutional requirements. These people rounded up as 'terrorists'?
This includes Larry al-Jones's mother, sister, brother, daughter,
grandfather because Nouri's forces couldn't locate Larry. They don't
think any of the family members had anything to do with it but they
suspect Larry, can't find Larry, and citing Article IV, they arrest
family members suspected of nothing.

This helps fuel the protests in Iraq, these mass arrests. Human Rights Watch's Erin Evers observed earlier this week:In recent months, the government has announced broad reforms in
response to weekly mass demonstrations in majority Sunni provinces.
These demonstrations began in December, after the arrest of Sunni
Finance Minister Rafi al-Essawi’s bodyguards.
Early on protesters demanded the release of prisoners — especially
female prisoners, who have been held illegally for long periods of time —
and reform of Article 4 of the Anti-Terror Law.Over the last several weeks in Baghdad, I’ve spoken with more than 30
women who are in detention or were recently released, along with
lawyers and families of detainees, researching allegations of torture in
Iraqi detention facilities.People told me over and over about random arrests, torture during
interrogation and prolonged detention in unofficial facilities. They
said corruption was rife among Interior Ministry officials, that there
was collusion between officials and judges, and that trials lacked the
most basic due process protections.Detainees repeatedly told me the government uses the broad provisions
of Article 4 to detain people without arrest warrants in detention
centers overseen by security forces that answer to the Interior and
Defense Ministries, or directly to the Prime Minister’s Office.I asked officials I met about promises to release detainees and about
the broader problems with the criminal justice system. By the
government’s own admission, some detainees have been held illegally for
months — even years.There is little evidence, though, that the government is carrying out
the pledged reforms, or that the reforms target illegal arrests,
coerced interrogations and arbitrary detentions.

It's Friday and the protests continue in Iraq. Above is a screen snap of Iraqi Spring MC's video of Falluja today. Alsumaria reports
tens of thousands turned out in Falluja and they may have that wrong --
looking at the photo with the article, it's hard to believe that's not
even more people than "tens of thousands." It is a huge crowd. And
they honored the victims of Tuesday's violence (over 50 dead from
Baghdad bombings alone, many more left wounded) by planting olive
seelings on the sides of the highway and reading verses from the Koran.
All Iraq News reported this morning that protesters in Anbar Province (Falluja and Ramadi are in Anbar) have been fired upon. In another report (still not identifying the locale other than Anbar), they quote
Shaikh Hamid al-Hayes declaring, "Many demonstrators were injured" and
we'll end his quote there. All Iraq News is not the source for the
reports, it's the Iraqiya Satellite Channel which is not connected to
Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya slate but is connected to Nouri, it's his
megaphone, it's state TV. They may be reporting of the infiltrators
in Ramadi. Social media's noted them earlier this morning. Alsumaria has a report here.
Ramadi protesters found infiltrators attempting to start violence (like
the ones who set fire to cars last week) and (as they did last week)
captured them and turned them over to authorities. There have been no
reports, however, of any shots fired in this episode. So either the TV
station is inflating the event or else another incident has taken place
in Anbar. Alsumaria posted
a report where Ramadi spokesperson Sayad Lafi states that there has
been no shots fired at the protest and that the number handed over to
authorities (of infiltrators) was four. Rumors continued throughout the day. All Iraq News reports
the false rumor that Ali Hatim al-Suleiman, Saeed al-Lafi and Iraqiya
MP Ahmed al-Alwani were kicked out of the Ramadi protest. This left Sheikh Ali Hatim al-Sulayman to explain -- from the Ramadi protest -- to NINA that neither he nor Sa'eed al-Lafee (also spelled Sayad Lafi) were kicked out of Ramadia's protest. All Iraq News also reported on the false rumor that al-Lafi was injured at the protests. And al-Lafi tells Alusmaria that there were no gun shots in the Ramadi protest.

What were all these false rumors about?

Sheikh Rafi al-Rifa'e explains to NINA,
"The government and its influential militias in Anbar spread rumors and
carry out acts of subversion to infringe the protestors, but due to the
braveness and awareness of the protest's coordination committees
contained such plans and uncovered the conspiracy."

The crowd turning out in Adamiyah Baghdad today. National Iraqi News Agency speaks
with Anbar activist Ahmed al-Alwani who explains "two delegations
arrived this morning [in Baghdad] in support of their fellow who
continue demonstrations and sit-ins since about three months in Anbar
province, demanding the central government to meet their legitimate
demands through resitituion of their usurped human rights."

Kitabat reports
today on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's call for Nouri to show
restraint when dealing with the protesters and for an investigation to
be launched into the killing of protesters.

National Iraqi News Agency quotes
Ramadi activist Mohammad Fayyad stating, "Thousands of protesters and
citizens went to sit-in square in Albfarraj area north of the city of
Ramadi, juxtaposed to the International Highway and to sit-in Square
east of the city of Fallujah for Friday prayers." Morning prayers came before the protests. NINA notes,
"Preacher of Friday prayers in Samarra Sheikh Mohammed Taha Hamdoun
held in his sermon, the commander in chief of the armed forces, Nouri
al-Maliki responsible for the recent security breaches in Baghdad and
other provinces, accusing the government of being 'insulting people and
shed blood of protesters and raping women,' he said." Alsumaria notes
that Friday prayers in Kufa included a call for Nouri to step down and
for the National Alliance (Shi'ite political slate) to put forward
someone to be prime minister in Nouri's place. To that, NINA adds
that Kufa's Sheikh Zia Shawki continued his sermon by explaining the
past "7 years under the rule of al-Maliki, the security in Iraq was
fragile and economy was shaking, adding that al-Maliki did not achieve
anything for Iraq." NINA also reports,
"The Imam of Najaf's Friday Prayer, Sadruldeen al-Qubanchi, said that
recent explosions in Baghdad intend to send a message to the world that
Iraq is unstable and its experience has failed" and he said that all
provinces must be able to vote in the elections. (Nouri has most
recently banned Nineveh and Anbar from voting.) In addition, Al Mada reports that clergy in Karbala and Nineveh also criticized Nouri today. Al Mada notes
the big news there may be have come in Karbala where the representative
authorized to speak for the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called out
the security system and called for change.

At the protests, Al Mada reports
many speakers in various provinces spoke out against the bombings and
noting Nouri's failures in providing security and they called for
Moqtada al-Sadr and Iraqiya to work together to save the country. In
Ramadi, Sheikh Muhannad al-Hiti called for the government to stop
procrastinating and start meeting the demands of the protesters.
Samarra's Sheikh Mohammed Taha Hamadoun decried the beating, humiliation
and rape that take place in Iraqi prisons.

At the March 1st protest in Ramadi, Minister of Finance Rafie al-Issawi announced his resignation. At the March 8th protests, Minister of Agriculture Ezz al-Din al-Dawla announced his resignation. All Iraq News reports
that Deputy Governor of Nineveh, Faisal Ajill al-Yawar, announced his
resignation today "in solidarity with the demonstrators in the
province." NINA adds
he also said he was resigning because the government was "not
fulfilling their [the protesters] legitimate demands that they have been
demanding for the last three months."

The editorial board of the Washington Post offers this take today on Iraq:Iraq remains plagued by the sectarianism that now pervades the Middle
East. Following a democratic election in 2010, Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki, a Shiite, formed a coalition government with parties
representing Kurds and secular Sunnis. But he has since driven the Sunni
vice president into exile, while the Sunni finance minister and Kurdish
foreign minister no longer visit Baghdad, much less carry out their
duties. Sunnis in western Iraq are growing increasingly restless, while
the remnants of al-Qaeda continue attacks against Shiite targets in
Baghdad. Tensions are also growing between Mr. Maliki and the autonomous
region of Kurdistan, with both sides deploying military forces near
territories claimed by both Baghdad and the Kurds.

In
Syria, Moahmmed Saeed Bouti was assassinated by a bombing which left
over 40 people dead and over 80 people injured. He was the President of
the Federation of Scientists. The assassination led various Iraqi
leaders to make statements noting the death: movement leader and cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the Iraqi Scholars Association, and Ahmed Chalabi.

I
felt we were risking so much for people who seemed unwilling to
cooperate with us, leading to frustration and hatred on both sides. I
began to become depressed at the situation we found ourselves
mired in year after year. In attempting counterinsurgency operations, we
became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists. I
wanted the public to know that not everyone living in Iraq were targets
to be neutralized.

For years now, Bradley has
been assumed to be behind the biggest government leak of this century
and possibly of the last century. Monday April 5,
2010, WikiLeaks released US
military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were
killed in the assault including two Reuters journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and
Saeed Chmagh. Monday June 7,
2010, the US military announced that they had arrested Bradley
Manning and he stood accused of being the leaker of the video. Leila Fadel
(Washington Post) reported in August 2010 that Manning had
been charged -- "two charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The
first encompasses four counts of violating Army regulations by transferring
classified information to his personal computer between November and May and
adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system. The second
comprises eight counts of violating federal laws governing the handling of
classified information." In March, 2011, David S. Cloud
(Los Angeles Times) reported
that the military has added 22 additional counts to the charges including one
that could be seen as "aiding the enemy" which could result in the death penalty
if convicted. The Article 32 hearing took place in December. At the start of
this year, there was an Article 32 hearing and, February 3rd, it was announced
that the government would be moving forward with a court-martial. Bradley has
yet to enter a plea. The court-martial was supposed to begin before the November 2012 election but it was
postponed until after the election so that Barack wouldn't have to run on a
record of his actual actions. Independent.ie adds, "A court martial is set to be held in June at Ford Meade in Maryland,
with supporters treating him as a hero, but opponents describing him as a
traitor."

February 28, Bradley stood up and publicly declared he had released the documents.

Patrick
Farrelly: He's retired not part of the administration. But Col James
Coffman is, he is a US army colonel and he reports directly to General
[David] Petraeus in the army chain of command. Steele is a consultant
or an advisor but Coffman actually is in the chain of command. So
therefore when this paramilitary force, when they need money or they
need equipment or whatever, Coffman is the guy who takes it upstairs to
Petraeus and Petraeus is the one who provides the money, provides the
weapons, provides whatever. So these guys are in these detention
centers, you have this torture going on and the torture is widespread.
And this is where Bradley Manning comes in. 'Cause I know you guys have
been talking about him. Part of the WikiLeaks discovery in terms of
the War Logs which was released by Bradly Manning to WikiLeaks shows
this entire pattern of US soldiers coming across these detention centers
or working with these detention centers because they're involved with
these special police commandos, they're providing them with guys to
interrogate, they're taking guys from them for further interrogation.
And what they're seeing is -- consistently, they're giving reports of
seeing torture, of seeing abuse. The Guardian went through these War
Logs and started looking at this stuff and started seeing patterns of
hundreds and hundreds of reports by US soldiers on the ground of this
going on and that's really what actually launched the inquiry and that's
what brought us to Col James Steele and Col James Coffman and actually
General David Petraeus.

Michael Ratner: It's interesting,
Patrick, because these are what they call the Iraq War Logs which
Bradley Manning talks about when he made his guilty plea the other day
as to why he wanted to reveal them because they were revealing all of
this criminality really and the counter-insurgency and which he didn't
like. Now can you give us a sense of two things. One is, why didn't
any of this come out before? I mean these War Logs have been out for a
couple of years now and, secondly, what kind of torture is described?

Patrick
Farrelly: I mean the interesting thing for me about the War Logs is
that an enormous amount was made of WikiLeaks and an enormous amount was
made of these to stuff that the Times and the Guardian, El Pais and the
other newspapers actually brought to light. But I have to say that
from that point onwards, the ball was dropped in many ways in the sense
of like journalists really getting into the detail of what these things
reveal and actually following them up. And I think this documentary the
Guardian and BBC Arabic produced is an example of the kind of material
which actually lies within these and which journalists actually should
be taking up. But going back to the issue of these special police
commandos, their existence was well known. General David Petreaus was
interviewed by this very find Frontline documentary called The Gangs of Iraq that Martin Smith made for PBS Frontline
in which he interviews General Petraeus. Petraeus is very proud of
these, he's very proud of the commandos but the way that it was being
posed in terms of our understanding of the situation was that after
Petraeus left Iraq in September of 2005 -- he'd been there since June
2004 dealing with setting up this new police force. It's only really
after that, according to them that these abuses happened -- when these
Shia political parties really took over and when these Shia militias
started getting into great. In other words it's another one of these
situation swhere the US army and the US government sets up these police
commandos which the locals invariably corrupt at a certain point and
then because they don't have the same standards as we do start abusing
people and start torturing people. What this investigation has found is
that from the very, very beginning, Col James Steele and Col James
Coffman who answer to Petraeus and who answer to Rumsfeld had, you know,
worked with these guys in these detention centers and were witnesses to
and knew this stuff was going on because you've got to -- It's a
production line because these young men come in, they were tortured --

Michael Ratner: How were they tortured?

Patrick
Farrelly: They were tortured by the worst kind of methods. I mean
these people were being hung up, off ceilings. These people were having
like, you know, their nails pulled out with pliers, it was
waterboarding. It was every concievable kind of torture that you can
think of.

Michael Smith: And how do we know that? That's in the documents?

Heidi Boghosian: Is it documented?

Patrick
Farrelly: Because we had a very important invidiual spoke to the
Guardian about the US involvement for the first time. He's a man by the
name of General Muntadher al-Samari and he had been a general in --
he's a Sunni -- and he had been a general in Saddam's regime. And when
the United States came in, he -- actually along with a number of other
Sunnis took the United States at their word that they were going to
frame and bring about a pretty regular democratic society so they
actually became involved with helping the United States actually put
together this police force. So Muntadher was there. He worked for the
Ministery of the Interior, he worked for the police, he worked directly
with Steele and he worked with Coffman. He'd meet Coffman, he had
meetings with Petraeus.

Michael Ratner: How many people were tortured? Ten? A hundred? A thousand?

Patrick
Farrelly: We don't have exact numbers but I think we're talking tens
of thousands of people were actually brought in. You're dealing with,
for example, if you take the ancient city of Samarra -- a very, very
important city in terms of the religion and the culture and the history
of that area -- which was also a place where there was enormous
opposition to the occupation. They went in there. They turned the city
library into a torture center. They turfed everything out that was
there and there was all these books, all these manuscripts and they
turned it into a torture center. They would then go out at night --
they were there for months on end in the fall and winter of 2004. They
would go out with trucks at night. They would pull in hundreds of
people who were then being processed. This went on for months. So I
mean the numbers in that place alone run into the thousands. And there
was a network of approximately 14 of these centers that we were aware of
throughout Iraq. So this was a fairly -- this was a large scale
operation which produced a lot of results. I mean that's one thing that
we have to be sure of, this was a thing which terrorized Sunni
community. There was no two ways, it was incredibly effective in terms
of scaring the living daylights out of people because this force that
they put on the ground and which started to work was a feared force. If
they're right in your neighborhood in their Dodge trucks because this
was one thing these guys were very, very happy with because Petraeus
gave them 150 Dodge trucks. They were then provided with other American
pick up trucks. I know in this country, it's a great thing to see if
you're out there in the farmlands but if you are living in a Sunni
neighborhood and you saw one of these trucks arriving, this was not a
good thing.

Heidi Boghosian: Well the result was a mass intimidation.

Patrick
Farrelly: It was a mass intimidation but it was also the case that
they tortured people into giving up -- You know, one of the American
soldiers that we interviewed for this said, "You know, people just gave
up everybody. They just gave up their relatives, their friends." It
just became this interrogation and torture mill which no doubt produced a
lot of information --

Michael Ratner: You know individuals
do -- It's not so clear, people'll do anything to stop torture. They'll
give false names. They'll do all kinds of things. But like in Algeria
in 1954, the French did mass torturing in Aljeers and as a result, they
could cross the people enough so that they knew which information was
correct or not, they had thousands of people tortured and that's what
this sounds like.

Michael Smith: And they did it also in
Vietnam around the same time. The Green Berets were involved in Vietnam
and in fact, it was the Green Berets, Michael and I did a book [Who Killed Che? How The CIA Got Away With Murder],
who were brought into Bolivia to train the Bolivian troops, they
eventually captured Che Guevara so this streak in American history of
Green Berets, Special Forces, torture, goes all the way back over a half
a century.

Patrick Farrelly: lI mean, for lack of better term, for empire, people like James Steele are very important.

Michael Ratner: Explain that a little.

Patrick
Farrelly: In the sense that if you go -- You know empires tend to roam
into other people's countries. It's like living next door to a war
lord. It's never -- they're never good neighbors. But when they go in
and they run into local opposition and quite often it's-it's-it's what
they call assymetrical warfare, it's guerrilla warfare, it's a so-called
irregular uprising, guys like James Steele are need in order to-to deal
with people like that and that was his speciality. There is another
longterm consequence I just want to deal with for a moment in terms of
Iraq which is that as this force became more and more part of the Shia
militias, a certain point, this force with 90% members of the Badr
brigades 90% Mehdi army who went into Sunni neighborhoods and caused
great, great slaughter.

That's the third excerpt of that
segment we've done this week. If we'd had more space and more time
this week, it would have all been excerpted. It's the only serious
interview we're apparently going to get in the US. Don't bring up the
nonsense from the Goody Whore today who couldn't even say
"counter-insurgency" (Ava
and I plan to tackle the Goody Whore Sunday). The Michaels and Heidi
spoke to their guests about actual issues. I don't think there was a
finer moment for radio last week than Law and Disorder Radio.
Bradley's facing some serious charges. If we want people to understand
how serious he took what he discovered, we're going to have to be able
to talk about what he discovered. Heidi and the Michaels were up to the
task.

The training of the death squads, the counter-insurgency, it still goes on. Human Rights Watch pointed out earlier this week:New information emerged as recently as early March 2013 indicating that
the US government is pursuing a policy of engagement with Iraqi security
forces accused of responsibility for torture and other abuses, with
little if any consideration of accountability for those abuses. A Wall
Street Journal report said that the CIA is “ramping up support” to the Iraqi Counterterrorism Service (CTS) to “better fight Al-Qaeda affiliates.”

“If correct, the report that the US intends to support the Iraqi
Counterterrorism Service underscores the poor US record on addressing
allegations of abuses by Iraqi security forces,” Whitson said. “The CTS,
though accused of committing serious abuses against detainees, worked
closely with US Special Forces before the US troop withdrawal in 2011.”

Worse, the CIA is reportedly
building up its assistance to an elite anti-terrorism unit that reports
directly to al-Maliki’s office and has been synonymous with the
torture, abuse and “disappearance” of detainees. Nothing the United
States could say to encourage greater respect for human rights is likely
to counter such a direct manifestation of indifference. After 10 years,
Washington should have learned that it cannot improve a government’s
human rights conduct when it joins that government in demonstrating
indifference to basic rights. At minimum, continuing security assistance
should be conditioned on respect for these rights that are so lacking
in today’s Iraq.

That's not five years ago, that's
Iraq today. Bradley's work matters because it has historical
implications but because it also explains what is taking place in Iraq
today.

Bradley's an Iraq War veteran. All week long, as
Iraq's has gotten bits of attention from the Big Media and even the
small, some veterans were ignored.

Lot of talk about being right. Lot of bragging and back patting.

But
what most of us did wasn't all that. The Dixie Chicks? Yeah, a
sacrifice followed that. But most of us could speak out without any
great suffering.

Iraq War veteran Joshua Key?

Joshua Key served in Iraq. He returned to the United States and he couldn't go back. He couldn't return to the illegal war.

Kim
Rivera served in Iraq. She returned to the United States and she
couldn't go back. She couldn't return to the illegal war.

James
Burmeister served in Iraq. He returned to the United States and he
couldn't go back. He couldn't return to the illegal war.

Kyle Snyder served in Iraq. He returned to the United States and he couldn't go back. He couldn't return to the illegal war.

Darrell
Anderson served in Iraq. He returned to the United States and he
couldn't go back. He couldn't return to the illegal war.

Guess what?

Those
are only a few of the names. All of the above went to Canada and
sought asylum. Darrell and James came back to the US. Kim -- like
Robin Long -- was forced out of Canada. Joshua and Kyle remain in
Canada -- along with others including the first Iraq War resister to
publicly attempt to be granted asylum in Canada: Jeremy Hinzman.

Where is the outlet that will say that they were right?

They
were right. And their actions helped awaken the country. Others who
resisted and remained in the US like Kevin Benderman, Camilo Mejia and
Stephen Funk were right too. Where's their pat on the back.

All of these people who showed the courage to say no to an illegal war helped awaken the country.

Lt.
Ehren Watada is the only officer who publicly resisted going to the
illegal war. So let's applaud his courage and drop back to the October 2, 2009 snapshot to remember his story:

This afternoon Fort Lewis's Media Relations department announced
that Ehren Watada had completed his out processing and was discharged
from the US military. We're going to stay with this topic for a bit
because (a) it is important and (b) it is historical. 1st Lt Watada was
the first officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. As Ann noted last night,
"there are people who have no idea what a brave thing he did." Ehren
Watada was informed he would be deploying to Iraq in June 2005. He had
not given much thought to Iraq. To prepare for the deployment, his
superior advised him to study up on the war so that he could answer any
questions that might come up from those serving under him. He started
researching the basics about the country itself, topography and
geography and continuing through the history up to the current war. He
came across the Downing Street Memos which exposed that the
'intelligence' for the Iraq War was fixed. He was now firmly convinced
that the Iraq War was illegal and immoral. From eager to serve in Iraq
to realizing he'd be violating his oath to the Constitution, Ehren was
now confronted with a decision. He could keep his mouth shut and just
do as he was told. Or he could take a stand which would risk the wrath
of the military as well as a portion of the public.

Ehren's mother, Carolyn Ho, has explained what happened next many times as she's spoken to raise awareness of her son's case. WBAI's Law and Disorder
shared one of her talks on their January 22, 2007 broadcast. Carolyn Ho
explained it was the new year, January 2006, and her son called her.
He explained that he had something to tell her, he'd decided decided he
wouldn't deploy to Iraq when the time came. She was very upset and
asked him if he understood what might result from his decision? Ehren
told her that he had no choide, he'd taken an oath to the Constitution,
this was what he had to do and he was going to inform his superiors.

Ehren
didn't hesitate to inform his superiors. This was in January 2006.
They at first attempted to change his mind. He could not be budged. So
they stated they wanted to work something out. They brainstormed
together. Ehren came up with ideas including, he could deploy to the
Afghanistan War instead, he could resign (his service contract expired
in December 2006). His superiors appeared to be eager to consider every
possibility; however, they were just attempting to stall. They appear
to have thought that if they put him off and put him off, when the day
to deploy came, he'd just shrug his shoulders and deploy.

They
did not know Ehren. June 7, 2006 ("the day before his 28th birthday,"
Carolyn Ho likes to remind), Ehren went public with his refusal to
deploy. Jake Armstrong (Pasadena Weekly) notes Ehren stated to
participate in the Iraq War would be participating in war crimes.

In August 2006, an Article 32 hearing was held. Watada's defense called three witnesses, Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois' College of Law, Champagne; Denis Halliday, the former Assistant Secretary General of the UN; and retired Colonel Ann Wright.
These three witnesses addressed the issue of the war, it's legality,
and the responsibilities of a service member to disobey any order that
they believed was unlawful. The testimony was necessary because Watada's
refusing to participate in the illegal war due to the fact that he
feels it is (a) illegal and (b) immoral. Many weeks and weeks later, the
finding was released: the military would proceed with a court-martial.

January 4, 2007,
Head oversaw a pre-trial hearing. Head also oversaw a stipulation that
the prosecution prepared and Watada signed. Head waived the stipulation
through. Then the court-martial begins and Ehren's clearly winning. The
prosecution's own military witnesses are becoming a problem for the
prosecution. It's Wednesday and Watada's finally going to take the
stand. Head suddenly starts insisting there's a problem with the
stipulation. Watada states he has no problem with it. Well the
prosecution has a problem with it and may move to a mistrial, Judge Toilet declares.

The
prosecution prepared the stipulation and they're confused by Head's
actions but state they're not calling for a mistrial or lodging an
objection. That's on the record. Head then keeps pushing for a mistrial
and the prosecution finally gets that Head is attempting to give them a
do-over, at which point, they call for a mistrial.

The case has
already started. Witnesses have been heard from. Double-jeopardy has
attached. The defense isn't calling for a mistrial and Head rules a
mistrial over defense objection and attempts to immediately schedule a
new trial. Bob Chapman (Global Research) observes,
"With little fanfare the Army at Fort Lewis, Wash., accepted the
resignation of the 1966 Kalari High School graduate, and he will be
discharged the first week in October."

War resisters were public and they were
underground. Those who went public shared important details of how they
came to see the Iraq War as illegal.

Mark Larabee's "Soldiers still go over the hill even in an all-volunteer Army" (The Oregonian)
was the first to tell James Burmeister's story and, in doing so, broke
the news of the kill teams (broke the news domestically) July 16,
2007. Dee Knight's "Army court-martials resister for blowing whistle on 'bait-and-kill'" (Workers World) detailed what Burmeister experienced as well:Private
First Class James Burmeister faces a Special Court Martial at Fort Knox
on July 16. The charges are AWOL and desertion. He returned to Fort
Knox voluntarily in March, after living 10 months in Canada with his
spouse and infant child. He refused redeployment to Iraq while on leave
in May 2007.In most such cases at Fort Knox, the
Army has in recent years quietly dismissed the resister with a less than
honorable discharge "for the good of the military." This time it's
different. The brass "offered" Burmeister a year in military prison and a
dishonorable discharge if he agreed to plead guilty.Burmeister
refused the offer. His father, Erich, says the Army is making an example
of James for denouncing a secret "bait-and-switch" program he was
forced to participate in while in Iraq. In media interviews last year in
Canada, James described the program as a war crime he was forced to
commit. Shortly afterward, the program's details came out in the
Washington Post."Baiting is putting an object out there that we know
they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," the Post
quoted Capt. Matthew Didier, leader of an elite sniper scout platoon.
"We would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item,
picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the
individual."The Post reported that "Eugene Fidell, president of the
National Institute of Military Justice, said such a baiting program ...
raises troubling possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick
up the items. ... 'You might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around
with a target on his back,' Fidell said." (Sept. 24, 2007)James had
asked to be classified as a conscientious objector following his
training in Germany, but his request was ignored by his commander.
Instead, he became a machine gunner. "Our unit’s job seemed to be more
about targeting a largely innocent civilian population or deliberately
attracting confrontation," he wrote in his deposition seeking asylum in
Canada. "These citizens were almost always unarmed. In some cases the
Iraqi victims looked to me like they were children." (Eugene Weekly, May
22)In Iraq, Burmeister had been knocked unconscious and his face
filled with shrapnel when his Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb. The
shrapnel wounds left him with a traumatic brain injury, and he suffers
from severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. His parents insist that he
urgently needs medical and psychological help, not jail time.His
parents have waged an unceasing struggle for the Army to release him.
They called on their representative, Peter DeFazio, to launch a
congressional inquiry into James’s case, but have so far heard nothing.
James' mother, Helen Burmeister, flew to Fort Knox in June, with help
from anti-war ex-Colonel Ann Wright. Helen spoke directly to the base
commander there, demanding that her son be discharged in lieu of a court
martial. She then joined supporters from Veterans for Peace and Vietnam
Vets Against the War demonstrating outside.People
who stood up -- publicly like the above or privately -- in the military
deserve a round of applause, deserve some praise. The Iraq War wasn't a
"dumb" war, the term is "illegal."

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Thursday. Almost the weekend. Remember, no Nikita tomorrow night. New episodes return next Friday and we get them new straight through to the end of the season.

Kai Ryssdal (MarketPlace) covered Iraq Wednesday in a brief commentary. My mom is a fan of MarketPlace because she see it as a show that tries to be honest. There are times when it's in conflict with the chatter NPR offers, for example. And when MarketPlace is doing facts, they do tend to get to the truth.

So here's how Kai's commentary opened:The United States has officially been out of Iraq for about 15 months.
But there are still thousands of American soldiers stationed in the
country today, ten years after the first full day of war. All those
people, along with thousands of reconstruction projects and programs
that we left behind.

That's more truth than you got all week on CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC and PBS combined.

That's why my mom likes the show. No one else is going to talk about the troops still in Iraq. But it's a fact so it will get noted on MarketPlace.

Heba al-Shamary (name changed for security reasons) was released last
week from an Iraqi prison where she spent the last four years."I was tortured and raped repeatedly by the Iraqi security forces,"
she told Al Jazeera. "I want to tell the world what I and other Iraqi
women in prison have had to go through these last years. It has been a
hell."Heba was charged with terrorism, a fate faced by many Iraqis who are detained by security forces."I now want to explain to people what is occurring in the prisons
that [Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki and his gangs are running," Heba
added. "I was raped over and over again, I was kicked and beaten and
insulted and spit upon."Heba's story, horrific as it is, unfortunately is but one example of
what a recent report from Amnesty International refers to as "a grim
cycle of human rights abuses" in Iraq today.The report, "Iraq: Still paying a high price after a decade of
abuses", exposes a long chronology of torture and other ill-treatment of
detainees committed by Iraqi security forces, as well as by foreign
troops, in the wake of the US-led 2003 invasion.

I'm glad Dahr's covered the Amnesty report. When it came out, only C.I. was covering it (beside wire services). She did four snapshots on it. It's an important report so I'm glad Dahr Jamail's covering it in the article.

It's also really important that what's happening to Iraqi women and girls is known. Until this month, the only reporter to cover it in a US outlet was Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor).

Thursday, March 21, 2013. Chaos and violence continue, journalists from
around the world reflect on Iraq, Nouri comes up with a new reason to
postpone elections in Anbar and Nineveh: Fraud!, Martin Kobler notes the
protesters, Ayad Allawi pens a column, and more.

Chair
Bernie Sanders: As I think we all know, it's now ten years since the US
went to war in Iraq, and Afghanistan before that, and what we have
learned in a variety of ways is that the cost of those wars have been
very, very high. They were high not just in the loss -- the tragic loss
-- of life that we've experienced, not just in terms of those who've
come home without arms or legs or eyesight or hearing problems but also
in terms of what we call the "invisible wounds of war" which are quite
as real as any other kinds of wounds. And those wounds include Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder -- PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury -- TBI and all
of the symptoms associated with those very serious illnesses. Further,
and tragically, it includes the serious problem of suicide. We are
losing about 22 veterans every single day as a result of suicide --
that's more than 8,000 veterans a year. And while suicide is a major,
major problem in the United States as a whole for our civilian
population, it is a terrible, terrible tragedy for the veterans'
community and something that we must address. And let me preface my
remarks by saying what I think everybody understands the issues that we
are dealing with today are very, very tough issues and if anyone had any
magic solution to the problems of mental illness in general, trust me,
we would have heard about that a long, long time ago. So this is a
tough issue. And we're going to do our best today to figure out where
we are in terms of the needs of our veterans and where we are going to
go forward.

Yesterday morning, Senator Bernie Sanders, Chair
of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee held a hearing on the issue of
timely access to high quality care. In yesterday's snapshot,
we noted Senator Patty Murray's remarks via a press release. Senator
Patty Murray is now the Chair of the Senate Budget Committee and she was
previously the Chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. In the
snapshot, I noted that there wasn't room to cover it that day and
indicated it might go into Friday's. E-mails mean we put it in today
and we start with. (We will grab the topic of Bradley Manning
tomorrow.) Tonight at her site, Kat will cover Ranking Member Richard Burr, Wally will go over to Rebecca's site to cover Senator Richard Blumenthal and money and Ava will be at Trina's site
covering a point three senators stressed as well a witness. She's
going to criticize a witness, I stand with her on that. I think we all
do (Kat and Wally are nodding as I dictate this). And all that coverage
is a result of the e-mails -- the large number of e-mails -- asking that
the hearing be covered.

We'll
cover two rounds of questioning from Chair Sanders. First up, from
panel one, he wanted the witnesses to talk about their experiences and
how you break through a culture of silence.

Chair Bernie
Sanders: I think all of you have indicated that peer supported efforts
of veterans talking to veterans is enormously important, that
occasionally we have to go outside the box with, I think one of you said
not everyone is alike and different individuals will respond to
different approaches So let me just start off -- Let me just start off
with you, Dr. Van Dahlen, in terms of how the VA, which we all know is a
huge bureaucracy -- there's no ifs-ands-or-buts about that, how do we
we enable them to become more flexible to reach out, to find community
based groups, peer support groups that are out there. How do we do
that?

Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen: Uhm, thank you. What we find in
communities -- and I know this from my work with several of my
colleagues at the VA -- the desire often in the individual is there to
work in the collaborative way but they're unclear whether they're
allowed to. And so one of the things that I would like to suggest is
that we literally work on what are the messages at each of the local --
every VA, whether it's a hospital center, whether it's a vets center,
they will know and have access to the community. And so what we should
do, and I think it would be pretty easy to do, is determine what gets in
the way, as we've done, of having regular community, and others have
done, gatherings where the VA serves as the convener and the catalyst,
what stops that from happening? So that people begin talking to each
other, they know then that if my organization can't serve that need,
TAPS can do it or NAMI can do it.

Chair Bernie Sanders: Right.

Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen: That's what needs to happen.

Chair
Bernie Sanders: Okay, let me ask this. One of the cultural issues
that we are struggling with -- the military is struggling with, the VA
-- is the culture -- "the stigma" I think is what Col Allred used am I
real mean if I have an emotional, mental problem? We understand that if
I lost an arm and a leg, I go and I get treatment. How do we deal with
a culture that says from a military perspective, "There's something not
quite manly about you if you have PTSD or you have TBI"? How do we
deal with that? Mr. Wood, do you want to respond to that?

Jacob
Wood: It's very challenging and it's not a problem we're going to solve
over night. As a Marine sniper, I was part of one of the more elite
units in the military and certainly one that carries that stigma very
heavily. We don't often seek counseling. If you do seek counseling,
like Clay actually did after being wounded in Iraq before being
redeployed to Afghanistan, you're often seen as a weaker link and that's
a stigma we have to fight absolutely. I myself have gone to seek
mental health counseling since getting out of the military. I've worked
with the VA and there make the connection that net initiative to
provide a video testimonial to that. I think what it does require
regular convenings as Dr. Van Dahlen mentioned where veterans can get
together. And we need to get veterans together in their home towns. We
need to get Marines together with soldiers together with Airmen
together with sailors in Omaha, Nebraska, in Davenport, Iowa, in
Oakland, California, where they can talk and share their experiences
after transitioning out of the military.

Chair Bernie Sanders:
Good. Okay, thank you. Andre, if you could, in Vermont, we're a very,
very rural state. We sent a lot of National Guards people to Iraq and
Afghanistan. Tell me about the peer-to-peer effort. Is it important --
just as Mr. Woods was saying -- that veterans who've been through that
experience reach out to other veterans? And how do we do that?

Andre
Wing: Thanks, Senator. As you know, my team has -- we have ten folks
on my team, we're all combat veterans. So we've all had struggles with
integration issues, we've all had struggles transitioning back to
civilian life. I think in our state, with the National Guard, it's not
as severe a stigma as it is on, maybe, an active duty base. Only
because -- I hear on this panel that we've talked about community
partnerships and we've really forged those ahead in the state of Vermont
with different initiatives that we've stated. We have a Director of
Psychological Health that works directly for the National Guard on the
Air side and the Army side. That stigma, I think, is more on the
military side. But as far as the peer-to-peer goes, we -- as you know,
we got out, we meet the folks, we get --

Chair Bernie Sanders: You knock on doors.

Andre
Wing: We knock on doors. And as I said, we have our feet under the
kitchen table. And I know that the President's got a new initiative of
800 peer support folks going out there but I think you heard this: The
common denominator is the peer-to-peer. It's very, very important
because we can talk. The other thing too that's important is we have
the military culture. So we can -- I can go into AHS [Agency of Human
Services] with the field directors and tell them, "Hey, this is how
maybe you need to approach some of these veterans, as an example."

Escape Fire: The Fight To Rescue American Healthcare is a documentary made by Susan Froemke and Matthew Heinemen. CNN began airing it last week. Earlier this month, they noted, "CNN has acquired the U.S. television broadcast rights for the award-winning documentary, Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare. The
film premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and received honors
at the 2012 Silverdocs, Full Frame, and other prominent festivals. The
two-hour feature-length film was produced and directed by Matthew Heineman and Academy Award-nominee Susan Froemke
and distributed by Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate. It will debut
on CNN/U.S. on Sunday, March 10 at 8:00pm and air again at 11:00pm
Eastern." You can click here
to stream two brief clips from the documentary and also to read an
article about it. This is the CNN program that gets referenced in this
exchange from the second panel.

Chair Bernie Sanders: One of
the, I think, recurring themes that we heard in the previous testimony
is that every soldier is different, every problem is different and that
we've got to think a little bit outside of the box and I think Senator
Boozman raised that issue. Talk a little bit of out of the box
therapies, talk a little bit about complimentary medicine. There was a
piece, I don't know if you saw it, John, on CNN the other day, they were
about over-medication which is a real, real issue and some of the
over-medicated were then moved to acupuncture, for example, as pain
relief which apparently, in what we saw in CNN at least, worked pretty
well. To what degree is the VA looking at complimentary medicine --
acupuncture, meditation, massage therapy? Talk about that and the
second issue, Senator Boozman raised that as well, you know, what we're
dealing with our real life problems and life is complicated. And it is
not necessarily just dispensing some medicine. It's certainly not
filling out pages and pages of forms which would drive me, among other
people, quite nuts if I needed help. And I want to talk to you about
how we break through that old bureaucracy but things like, Senator
Boozman mentioned, playing golf. If four veterans spend an afternoon
out playing golf and feeling good about each other and talking and come
back feeling a little bit better about themselves -- or they go trout
fishing or they go camping together, those are real improvements which
may mean a lot more to the veterans than getting some more medication.
So the question is to what degree are we thinking outside the box to
make people feel better about themselves in whatever way? And, by the
way, Senator Bozeman, where we have to be careful of when we make these
recommendations is not to see front page stories that "VA Pays For Golf
Outings On The Part Of Veterans!" That's a very easy target for the
media.

Senator John Boozman: No, I agree totally. That's why I was asking if they had some evidence based as to what's working.

Chair Bernie Sanders: Yeah, but that's the question I want to throw out, if you can answer it.

Dr.
Robert Petzel: Uh, uh thank you. Both. Uh, let me first drill --
deal -- with a little bit of the out-of-the-box. Uhm, We partner with a
tremendous number of organizations around the country. Uhm, Give An
Hour is an example of psychotherapy. The professional golf association
and the local professional golf association have programs in virtually
every city that we have a medical center that provide the opportunity
for handicapped people to play golf. And we have a -- We actually
sponsor a blinded golf tournament, uhm, that, uh, occurs every year in
Iowa City. Uhm, there are many more examples of recreational
activity. Horseback riding, kayaking -- where individual veterans and
service organizations have put together these non-profits that provide
these opportunities. We're looking for them everywhere we can find
them Whether or not they're enough and whether we're using it enough is
an open question but we are very much open to those opportunities.

Chair
Bernie Sanders: I want to get back again to the issue that Senator
Boozman appropriately raised and that is over-medication and perhaps
other ways to deal with pain and other distress.

Dr. Robert
Petzel: Ev -- I -- Again, let me deal first with opiates -- which is
the most dangerous in my mind of our -- of our over medication issues.
We've got a three pronged approach -- process -- where you begin with
the least invasive, least dangerous, least risky things to manage
chronic pain and this is being done at all of our medical centers. And
that may include acupuncture. We provide acupuncture at the vast
majority of our medical centers. And then, progressively, more
complicated things such as rehabilitation, etc. And eventually, when
you're not able to manage the pain in any other way, it's opiates. And
then there are very careful protocols about how that prescribing should
be done. Second step in that is that we have just, uh, begun producing a
computer program that provides to the medical centers a listing of
patients who are taking an unusually large number of opiates and
prescribers who are prescribing an unusually large number. And that's
transmitted back to medical center, a person is responsible for tracking
that down at the medical center and seeing what the issues are. And
the third thing is that we are participating now in the state reporting
of, uh -- of, uh, opiates. That's very important because some of our
patients are getting prescriptions outside of the VA and we need to be
able to bring that data together so we fully understand the extent of
the problem. So we'll be giving them our data and we'll be able to have
access to the state-wide dataThis was one of Sander's first
solo-chairings. I believe it was his second. (If it was his third,
I've missed a hearing.) He won high marks for bringing up this topic
and for trying to nail the witness down. As Sanders rightly notes, what
works for one person may not for another. We have noted that here many
times and the reason being because veterans note it to me. They have
often spoken of the fact that the Congress seems to hung up on fixing
things with pills as opposed to other treatments or approaches. So
Chair Bernie Sanders was the crowd pleaser among veterans attending this
hearing and there were other moments in the hearing that were noted but
all seven I spoke to made a point to signal out his questions from the
second panel above. Each Committee Chair brings their own strengths to
the position and, right now, it appears Sanders has discovered one of
his already.

The US Ambassador to Iraq is Stephen
Beecroft. He oversees the US mission in Iraq which has slashed its
staff of 16,000 by a little over 500. AP reports Beecroft says that number will be about half by December 2013. Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) offers,
"The money just isn’t there, and neither is the appetite to put that
sort
of effort into Iraq after years of waste. Instead, the enormous embassy
will be a mostly empty reminder of the disastrous adventure into
Iraq." That could be correct. I was honestly hoping Ditz was hearing
what I was hearing from the State Dept. I've already noted that
Secretary of State John Kerry deserves some credit for this. I'll throw
out what I've been told by several at the State Dept. This isn't about
money. This is about concern for the diplomatic staff and the concern
stems from what's going on right now on the ground and from the fact
that the administration suddenly realizes that Nouri al-Maliki
repeatedly tells them "yes" but doesn't follow up. Such as when it's
conveyed to him that he must stop attacking the protesters. And Nouri
is in complete agreement. And then his forces go on to attack the
protesters in Mosul. This is happening repeatedly with a wide variety
of areas. What I'm told is that Kerry (with backing from Secretary of
Defense Chuck Hagel) made clear that those working for the State Dept
must be safe. Is that Benghazi on his mind? I don't know. I would
guess it is more likely how he grew up. He's spoken of his being raised
overseas with his diplomat father many times, of his trip in Germany,
around the Berlin Wall to East Germany, and of how with that one, his
father stressed afterwards that it wasn't a smart move and went over
safety basics. I think its just part of his character due to his
parents. (A very good part.) But that's what I'm hearing. I'd love
for it to be a money issue. That would mean everyone was coming out.
But what I was told is that they're trying to get down to a level that
they feel can be easily protected. That may not be accurate. That may
be office gossip that turned into a game of telephone. But I've been
told that repeatedly by friends with the State Dept. And I did note
that Hagel is said to have backed up Kerry on that. I'm not a fan of
Hagel's. If what I'm being told is correct, that was a solid move by
Hagel for which he deserves credit.

My other impression was how incredibly dangerous it was. I don’t
think I knew how dangerous. At the sound of explosions near my hotel, I
rushed to the scene as if I were back in Saigon during the Vietnam War,
when you were a whole lot safer.Foolishly, in retrospect, I thought nothing of going down darkened
streets in search of a guy who, after his guards ushered me through
about three gates, gave me a tremendous briefing in his elaborate
apartment. I had to enter the central bank by a back gate through a
barbed-wire fence, guarded by a nervous guy with an AK-47. One guy whom I
interviewed hefted an Uzi on his desk. Another had me picked up in his
own armored car with two guards and a driver.
Donald Kirk was an
unembedded journalist -- meaning he was not 'stationed' with a branch of
the military. Sometimes when he was reporting for CBS News Radio, he
had a bodyguard and possibly one in a car trailing them. With the
magazine, he was on his own.

A great deal of on the ground reporting was done by Iraqis. Today Michele Martin (NPR's Tell Me More -- link is audio and there will be transcript at link by tomorrow if not tonight) speaks with former New York Times correspondent Abdulrazzaq al-Saiedi.
He is an Iraqi who became a journalist after the war started. "For me,
this is really important that we're telling the truth and that we
describe the scene as it is -- for good or for bad." He arrived on the
scene in Falluja, March 31, 2004, of the 4 American contractors who were
killed (burned) and then hung in the air. Abdulrazzaq
al-Saiedi: I saw 2 bodies were completley burned, were hung and there's
2 just on the ground. And the two on the ground -- There's children
there, and one of the -- one of the kids, I think he was ten or like
eleven years old, and he was kicking one of the bodies and he kept
saying this is Pacha, Pacha. And Pacha is an Iraqi meal made of the
head of the sheep. And that for me, I said this is like too much. I-I-I
can't stand it. But also at the same time I have my camera with me but
I was so scared if I would take pictures maybe this mob -- They were so
excited and mostly teenager, children. And there was no policemen, no
American soldiers. No any. None. And then they look at me because I
think maybe they ask themselves who is this? And then I find myself
with people there, staring at me. And I know with one war, I could be
the fifth body. And then they look at me and I pretend I'm excited, you
know, with -- with this. And then I decide to leave. So I left. But I
left with a story.

He wrote about this for last Sunday's New York Times Magazine in a feature article entitled "The Unwilling Witness."
When we list the toll of journalists in the Iraq War, we don't buy into
the 'media assistant' or anything else. And stringer is really
insulting for what a lot of them do. So if you worked in media in Iraq,
my view is you were a journalist and you earned that title -- good
journalist or bad journalist -- so we always use one total. So while
the Committee to Protect Journalists counts 139 journalists and 51 media workers
killed in Iraq since the start of the war, we would call that 190
journalists killed. That's only one number and, in 2012, we noted that
CPJ was missing deaths as they happened. As 2012 came to end Yang Lina (Xinhua) noted
5 had died in 2012 and 373 had died since the start of the Iraq War.
For years now, we've noted that Xinhua is much better on the ground in
Iraq than many outlets. (Robert Fisk says the Telegraph of London is the best in Iraq when it comes to covering British intel.)

On the topic of Xinhua, Pang Lei (Economic Observer) notes
that Xinhua is thought to be the first wire service, back in 2003, to
report that the war had started. Jamal Hashim was the reporter in
Baghdad who "phoned Xinhua's Middle East Bureau from Baghdad at 5.33am
(local time) on the morning of March 20, 2003 after he first heard air
raid sirens blaring and then raced to the roof of his building and heard
the sounds of explosions from the city. [. . .] Xinhua was elated to
have beat out the other wire services in breaking one of the biggest
stories of the decade and they feted their new star reporter. Hashim was officially offered a reporting position with Xinhua (he continues to file stories from Iraq
for Xinhua), awarded $1,000 and invited to Beiijng to meet with the
head of the news agency and receive two of their highest honors. "

In this NBC News video from earlier this week, you can seeAP's
Kimberly Dozier and NBC News' Mike Taibbi and Kerry Sanders reflect on
covering Iraq. Kimberly Dozier was among the journalists injured while
covering the Iraq War. Jill Carroll, Richard Butler, Marie Jeanne Ion,
Sorin Dumitru Miscoci, Ovidiu Ohanesian, Florence Aubenas, Paul Taggart,
John Martinkus, Stephen Farrell, Jeffrey Gettleman and Giuliana Sgrena
are among the many journalists who were kidnapped while covering Iraq
and were released alive. Others, such as Fakher Haider, Abdulrazak
Hashim Ayal and Jamal al-Zubaidi, were kidnapped and killed. The dead
also includes ITV's Terry Lloyd and his interpreter Hussein Oman who
were killed by US forces. ITV News notes March 22nd
is the tenth anniversary of Lloyd's killing -- which a British inquest
found to be an unlawful killing. His daughter Chelsey Lloyd is part of a
documentary retracing her father's death and you can stream a preview
of the documentary here here.

As Ann noted last night, Sara Flounders (Workers World via Global Research) has a critique of the selling of the war that the US media took part in:The corporate media in the U.S. play a powerful role in
preparation for imperialist war. They play an even more insidious role
in rewriting the history of U.S. wars and obstructing the purpose of
U.S. wars.They are totally intertwined with U.S. military, oil and banking
corporations. In every war, this enormously powerful institution known
as the ‘fourth estate’ attempts, as the public relations arm of
corporate dominance, to justify imperialist plunder and overwhelm all
dissent.The corporate media’s reminiscences and evaluations this week of the
10th anniversary of the Iraq War, which began March 19, 2003, are a
stark reminder of their criminal complicity in the war.In the many articles there is barely any mention of the hundreds of
news stories that totally saturated the media for months leading to the
Pentagon onslaught. The news coverage in 2003 was wholly
unsubstantiated, with wild fabrications of Iraqi secret ”weapons of mass
destruction,” ominous nuclear threats, germ warfare programs, purchases
of yellow cake uranium, nerve gas labs and the racist demonization of
Saddam Hussein as the greatest threat to humanity. All of this is now
glossed over and forgotten.

Another media critique is from Anthony DiMaggio (CounterPunch) who points out:I won’t fault the New York Times for pointing
out the stupefying incompetence of the Bush administration in its
post-invasion occupation. I do take the paper to task, however, for its
complete unwillingness to recognize the real reasons why the
American public opposed the Iraq war. Those reasons have to do with
moral and substantive rejection of the application of U.S. imperial
power abroad. This reality has scarcely been recognized by academics,
journalists, political leaders, or even professional polling
organizations (pollsters generally rely on political officials and the
media to set the agenda for the types of questions they will ask).Sadly, I have not seen a single polling question asked in the
last ten years that measured whether Americans thought the war in Iraq
was imperialist or not. The question of whether the war was a
“well-intentioned mistake” or “fundamentally wrong and immoral” has
never appeared once in the national discourse when it comes to public
opinion surveys. Polls that might have questioned whether the U.S.
invaded Iraq primarily for its massive oil reserves seldom materialized
because the answers would have been too damning to report in a country
where the political discussion revolved around whether the war was just
and necessary or a noble mistake.

One
media critique that I'm not seeing any of the American journalists make
is one about Nouri al-Maliki who long ago declared war on the media.
In December alone, he shut down two broadcast outlets (three if you
factor in that one of the TV channels also had a radio station). He's
repeatedly used his armed forces to prevent journalists from access to
news sites. In 2006, he was doing that with regards to bombings. He
didn't want photos of the victims emerging because that might underscore
how violent things actually were in Iraq. Today, he resorts to it to
keep reporters away from the ongoing protests.

That may be an improvement from 2011 when he had reporters who covered the protests kidnapped and tortured. February 28, 2011, Kelley McEvers (NPR's Morning Edition -- link is audio and text) reported
on what happened to Hadi al-Mahdi, activist and journalist, after a
morning of covering the protests when he stopped to have lunch.MCEVERS: Hadi al Mahdi runs a popular radio show that's long been
critical of the government. He recently encouraged his 6,000 Facebook
followers to protest against corruption. A few days ago, he was eating
lunch with other journalists when soldiers pulled up, blindfolded them,
and whisked them away. Mahdi was beaten in the leg, eyes, and head. A
soldier tried to get him to admit he was being paid to topple the
regime. Mr. AL MAHDI: (Through translator) I replied, I told
the guy who was investigating me, I'm pretty sure that your brother is
unemployed, and the street in your area is unpaved, and you know that
this political regime is a very corrupt one. MCEVERS: Mahdi
was later put in a room with what he says were about 200 detainees, some
of them journalists and intellectuals, many of them young protesters. Mr.
MAHDI: (Through translator) I started hearing voices of other people.
So, for instance, one guy was crying, another was saying, where's my
brother? And a third one was saying, for the sake of god, help me. MCEVERS:
Mahdi was shown lists of names and asked to reveal people's addresses.
He was forced to sign documents while blindfolded. Eventually he was
released. Mahdi says the experience was worse than the times
he was detained under Saddam Hussein. He says the regime that's taken
Saddam's place is no improvement on the past. This, he says, should
serve as a cautionary tale for other Arab countries trying to oust their
dictators. Mr. MAHDI: (Through translator) They toppled the
regime, but they brought the worst - they brought a bunch of thieves,
thugs, killers, and corrupt people, stealers.

As I've noted
before, I exchanged e-mails with Hadi al-Mahdi. He wrote to (kindly)
correct me on a few things and to steer me to some other resources for a
topic. He doesn't do his radio show anymore. He was assassinated on September 8, 2011. From that day's snapshot:

Madhi had filed a complained with the courts against
the Iraqi security forces, noting that they had now warrant and that
they kidnapped him in broad daylight and that they beat him. Mohamed Tawfeeq (CNN) adds,
"Hadi al-Mehdi was inside his apartment on Abu Nawas street in central
Baghdad when gunmen shot him twice with silencer-equipped pistols, said
the ministry official, who did not want to be identified because he is
not authorized to speak to media." Mazin Yahya (AP) notes
that in addition to calling for improvements in the basic services
(electricity, water and sanitation), on his radio program, Hadi al-Mehdi
also used Facebook to get the word out on the Friday protests in
Baghdad's Tahrir Square.

Despite international outcry,
no effort was made to find his killer/s. I firmly believe Nouri
al-Maliki was behind that attack. I believe he was behind the hacking
of the Iraqi news sites Al Mada and Kitabat and there's no question that he's attempted to use the military to intimidate Al Mada's Chair and editor Fakhri Karim. That's the reality of what happens to Iraqi journalists in Nouri's Iraq. Al Mada's Adnan Hussein noted in a February column for England's New Statesman:Ultimately, al-Maliki and his Dawa Party have managed to create a new
kind of dictatorship. This is a curse not only to the Sunnis, or the
Kurds, or the swaths of Shias, but to the country as a whole.As an editor and columnist of al-Mada, a critical, oppositional
newspaper in Iraq, I am given considerable editorial freedom, and there
is certainly no shortage of subjects to cover. I am, however, concerned
about the freedom of the press.Fortunately, a draft anti-media law has now been reversed, much to
the relief of my colleagues and peers. Journalism is a dangerous
business, and yet the level of hazards is hardly higher than the tension
about the car bombs and assassinations that continue to plague the
people of Iraq.

Moving over to poetry . . .

Yesterday I lost a country.I was in a hurry,and didn't notice when it fell from melike a broken branch from a forgetful tree.That's from Dunya Mikhail's poem "I Was In A Hurry." Renee Montagne (NPR's Morning Edition -- link is audio and transcript) spoke with the Iraqi who left the country back in the 90s and Mikhail read two of her poems. That was today. Wednesday? Fars News Agency reports
that yesterday "Iraq marked the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion
[. . .] a day after a spate of deadly bombings and gun attacks left
over 60 people dead." Zab Mustefa (Pakistan's Express Tribune) offers:When I ask Iraqis if their country is better off since foreign troops
touched the ground, opinions are varied. But a vast proportion agree
that Iraq is now worse than it has ever been.A corrupt puppet in office (Nour al-Maliki),
that discriminates against Sunni Muslims, further poverty and sectarian
violence at its peak has crumbled the country and proven costly to
America, which spent over $800,000 billion so far.For me, one of the most saddening things about Iraq is the post-war effect. Fallujah
was at the centre of the US and UK military campaign and now, more than
half of the babies conceived after the foreign invasion are born with
deformed and missing limbs, brain damage, tumours and heart defects.

Today
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Special Representative
to Iraq addressed the UN Security Council. We'll try to fit it in
tomorrow. He noted "UNAMI urges the Government to respond to those
popular demands which
can be addressed in the short term, and to do so immediately. Other
demands will require more time for a response." But for months, Nouri
has brushed them aside when not attacking them outright. Alsumaria reports
that Iraqiya is calling for a session of the Council of Ministers to
hear the protesters' demands and figure a way to implement them.
Today Iraqi Spring MC has posted
in the last 14 hours about military equipment being moved from Baghdad
to Anbar Province. Thug and prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has declared Tuesday
that Anbar and Nineveh Province will not be voting April 20th when
provincial elections are held. He's decreed that it's too violent there
and he made that decree on the day over 60 deaths took place in Baghdad
Province. But he's not attempting to halt the vote there.

Many see the move as an effort to punish the protesters in the two
provinces. Equally true, he probably doesn't want to see the success of
political rivals at the polls in those two provinces.

Nouri and his State of Law goons can never get the message straight.
Today, MP Salman al-Moussawi sets the hymnal aside and sings off tone. National Iraqi News Agency reports
al-Moussawi is stating that the elections in the two provinces were
postponed "to stop the fraud in the elections." So on Tuesday, the
world is told it's due to violence. On Thursday, the world is told it's
due to fear of fraud.

United Nations Secretrary-General Ban Ki-Moon has a Special Envoy in Iraq, Martin Kobler. As noted yesterday, the UN quotes Kobler declaring today,
"There is no democracy without elections. The citizens of these
provinces are looking forward to these elections with great hope. They
should not be disappointed." And now, according to State of Law's latest
switch-around, they're being postponed due to fear of fraud. It'll be
interesting to hear the UN's response to that.

In the March 2010 parliamentary elections, Nouri al-Maliki cried fraud
and stomped his feet. He wasn't happy to come in second place. He
demanded a recount. There was no fraud, he came in second. State of
Law has a real problem dealing with election results. First place Iraqiya is headed by Ayad Allawi who has a nationally syndicated column in the US via Project Syndicate:Iraq’s last general election,
in 2010, brought hope of recovery in the form of a power-sharing
agreement among Sunni, Shia, and Kurds, which was supposed to ensure
that the country did not revert to dictatorship. Iraqiya, which I lead,
was the largest electoral bloc to emerge from that vote. But, despite
our status, we agreed to give up the leadership position afforded by the
Constitution in the belief that power-sharing and respect for the
rights of all Iraqis is the only formula for governing the country
democratically. These hopes, however, soon vanished, as Iraq’s two-term
prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, subsequently reneged on the agreement.

Today,
the very human rights that were guaranteed by the constitution are
being violated, with a politicized judiciary routinely abused and
manipulated in order to justify the prime minister’s actions. Instead of
keeping the Maliki government in check, the courts facilitate its quest
for ever-greater power.

Making
matters worse for ordinary Iraqis, public services have deteriorated to
a dismal level, and unemployment is rising sharply, despite public
expenditure in excess of $500 billion over the seven years of Maliki’s
rule. Sectarianism and racism have become a regular feature of the
political landscape. Corruption is rampant, and Baghdad is now
considered one of the world’s worst places to live.

If
Iraq continues along its current disastrous path, mayhem and civil war
will be the inevitable outcome, with dire consequences for the entire
region. Yet Iraqis continue to hope for a better future.

Yesterday, Alsumaria reported
that Iraqiya MP Nahida Daini said that postponing the elections for the
reasons given would be caving into violence. She'll need to amend that
statement to postpoing the elections out of fear of fraud is giving
into fraud. Alsumaria reports today that the Sadr bloc has called Nouri's move "illegal and unconstitutional." The Sadr bloc MP Ali al-Timimi is quoted by All Iraq News stating
that the UN has refused the postponement and that this "came after the
visit of the Deputy UNSG's Special Representative for Iraq, Georgi
Posten, to the Ahrar bloc and giving them a document which asserted
that." Alsumaria notes Anbar Province Sahwa leader Abu Rhisha is also calling out the decision to postpone elections.

Meanwhile Nouri's declaring
that this week's bombings (he means Tuesday in Baghdad -- the Green
Zone was in trouble, so Nouri cares) are the result of people --
"officials and parliamentarians" -- calling for sectarianism. Alsumaria reports
that Iraqiya and the Sadr bloc are calling for Nouri and other security
leaders to appear before Parliament and answer questions about the
bombings. Nouri would be appearing as commander and chief as well as
the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Defense and the Minister
of National Security. Back in July, Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) observed,
"Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has struggled to forge a lasting
power-sharing agreement and has yet to fill key Cabinet positions,
including the ministers of defense, interior and national security,
while his backers have also shown signs of wobbling support." That
remains true today. Nouri's ignored the Constitution and refused to
nominate people for the three posts and let Parliament confirm or shoot
them down. If Parliament confirmed them -- this is confusing in the US,
I know -- Nouri would lose control of the Ministry. The head of the
ministry, once confirmed, cannot be removed unless Parliament votes to
remove them. Nouri can't fire a minister. The minister is in charge of
the ministry budget and the ministry's mission. It's not like in the
US with the White House's Cabinet.

How easy is to get Parliament to 'fire' someone? For over two years
now, Nouri's tried to get them to fire Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi.
They have refused. He remains Vice President.

On the surface, it would appear that there is a division
of power among the Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish segments of the
population, and the justice system seems to be functioning adequately.

However, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malikiis
ruling Iraq like a dictator. He recently used massive force to suppress
protest rallies by Sunni Muslims in the western province of Anbar.
Demonstrators were arrested, some of whom simply “vanished.” Torture and
physical abuse are still part of the routine followed by the security
forces.

Vice
President Tariq al-Hashemi, who is Sunni, fled the country after
al-Maliki had a warrant issued for his arrest over involvement in
terrorist activity. Cabinet ministers and members of parliament live in
houses protected by high walls; they have personal security guards whose
services they pay for themselves because they do not rely on the
security services provided by the state.

Arrests occur routinely without warrants. Thousands of people are
held without charge with no end in sight, sometimes in unofficial
detention facilities. Torture during interrogation is common. People
brought to trial are often convicted through coerced confessions and
secret informant testimony. Corruption is reportedly rife in the
Interior Ministry, and collusion between officials and judges is said to
be common. Judges typically close their eyes to evidence of torture,
and due process at trial is rare. Executions are skyrocketing – 129 in
2012 compared with 62 the prior year – with few details available about
the identity of those condemned or the charges against them.The government justifies many arrests in the name of fighting
“terrorism,” but the common denominator among those caught up in this
system of injustice is perceived opposition to Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki. Rather than build a broad political coalition, al-Maliki has
used repression to address political threats.

Followers

About Me

I'm Michael, Mike to my friends. College student working his way through. I'm also Irish-American and The New York Times can kiss my Irish ass. And check out Trina's Kitchen on my links, that's my mother's site.